Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

DURING THOSE WEEKS, NOW FAST ACCUMULATING into months, he continued to live alone and yet not alone among the millions of people who surrounded him. He had a habit of talking with anyone who happened to be near him, asking his countless questions, storing the answers, short or long, into the bottomless wells of his memory, without thought of what use he would make of all he learned. He asked, he listened, he stored, and prompted by his endless capacity for wonder, he continued his life, knowing that this was only a passing moment in the many years. He wrote to his mother regularly, but, as he explained, he had not yet had time to look for his grandfather. His supply of money scarcely dwindled, for he was frugal, eating gargantuan meals but of simple and cheap food, and from time to time earning money by temporary jobs, usually on the wharves, loading and unloading ships. Still trusting no one, he kept his money in a few large bills, hidden on his person or under his pillow at night. He was friendly to his neighbors in passing, but he continued to make no friends. He did not miss friends now, for he had never had them, his thoughts always far beyond theirs.

So time might have continued for him, except for an experience he had one night, near midnight, which made him feel the need of someone to know, someone related to him. He had been to an opera at the Metropolitan, climbing to a seat high under the roof, from whence the figures moving upon the stage were dwarfs. But the music floated upward, the voices superb and pure, and this was what he had come to hear, standing in line for hours before to buy his ticket. He had stumbled downstairs at the end in a dream of delight, and alone in the masses of people pouring out of the doors, he decided against the subway and chose instead to walk, the night being clear and the moon full. At a corner of a dark, half-empty street he waited for the red light to change to green. Standing there, he became aware of a young man, almost a boy—so young he was—slender, his dark hair long over his pale face, approaching him.

“Hi,” the boy said. “You goin’ somewheres?”

“To my lodging,” he replied.

“Haven’t a quarter, have you?” the boy asked.

He felt in his right-hand pocket, found the coin, and gave it to the boy.

“Thanks,” the fellow said. “This’ll buy me a bite to eat.”

“Don’t you work?” he asked.

The boy laughed. “Call it work,” he said carelessly. “I’m on my way now to where the nightclubs are. I’ll pick up five dollars—maybe ten.”

“How? If you don’t work—”

“You mean you don’t know? Where’d you come from?”

“Ohio.”

“No wonder you don’t know nothin’! See—this is how a feller does it. I pick a guy—rich, by himself—and I ast him for ten dollars, five if he ain’t so rich. He looks at me like I’m crazy—maybe tells me to get outta his way or somepin. Then I tell him if he don’t give it to me I will go to a policeman—always do it when I know there’s a policeman ’round the corner—like. I tell him I’ll tell the cop he propositioned me.”

“Propositioned you?”

The boy laughed raucously. “Golly, you’re only a kid! Don’t you know? Some guys like girls, some like boys. On’y difference is, it’s a crime to like a boy. So the guy knows this will make him big trouble so sooner than get into that kind of trouble, the guy’ll give me the money first.”

“You make your living like that?”

“Sure—easy and no work. Try it and see.”

“Thanks—I’d rather work.”

“Suit yourself. It ain’t easy to get a job. You got folks?”

“Yes. My grandfather.”

“Okay—so long. I see a guy comin’—”

The boy ran down the street to a restaurant, from whence a well-dressed man had just come. The man paused, shook his head, and the boy ran to the corner where a policeman stood.

Rann waited no longer. Suddenly he wanted to know his grandfather. Tomorrow, early, he would find him. He no longer wanted to be alone in this wilderness city.

THE ADDRESS WAS IN BROOKLYN and he had not yet been to Brooklyn. He disliked the subway and he liked to walk, especially in the early morning, when the air was still clean and the streets were almost empty. Only great trucks lumbered in from the countryside, bearing their loads of fowl and vegetables and fruits, eggs and meat. He stopped to saunter through Wall Street, that narrow center of the city’s financial heart. He lingered to peer through the iron fence of an ancient cemetery set about an old smoke-blackened church, Fraunce’s Tavern—he knew its history, and paused to stare at its sign, its doors not yet open for the day. And reaching at last to the great Brooklyn Bridge, he stood gazing into the flowing water beneath. The ships, the barges, were on their way. He saw it all in his usual, absorbed fashion, in his habit of wonder, each sight sinking into the depths of mind and memory, and deeper still, into his subconscious, somehow, sometime to emerge when he needed it, whole or in fragment.

Thus he followed one street and another, having studied his map well before he came. He did not like to ask his way, he liked to find it and for that he learned to memorize a map visually so that he always knew where he was. Thus in time, before the sun had reached the zenith of noon, he found himself standing before an old but very clean apartment house. The street was quiet and lined with trees now beginning the first autumn coloring.

He entered the building and found an old doorman in a gray uniform, asleep in an armchair, its brocaded upholstery rich and soft.

“Would you please—,” he began.

Instantly the old man woke. “What do you want, boy?” he asked, his voice quavering with age.

“My grandfather lives here—Dr. James Harcourt.”

“Does he expect you? He don’t usually get up until afternoon.”

“Will you tell him his grandson, Randolph Colfax, is here from Ohio?”

The old man heaved himself stiffly from his chair and went to the house telephone. In a few minutes he was back.

“He says he’s still eatin’ his breakfast but you can come up. Top floor, to the right, third door. I’ll run you up. The elevator’s over here.”

The vehicle conveyed him to the top floor, and he turned to the right and knocked on the third door. There was an old-fashioned brass knocker and a small engraved card was fastened to the center panel of the mahogany door—JAMES HARCOURT, PHD, MD. And now the door opened and his grandfather stood before him, a white linen napkin in his hand.

“Come in, Randolph,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep and strong. “I’ve been expecting you. Your mother wrote me you were coming. Have you had your breakfast?”

“Yes, sir. I got up early and walked.”

“Then sit down and call it luncheon. I’ll have some eggs scrambled freshly.”

He followed the tall, very thin old figure into a small dining room. The oldest man he had ever seen, wearing a spotless white jacket over black trousers, came into the room.

“This is my grandson,” his grandfather said. “And Randolph, this is my faithful manservant, Sung. He attached himself to me some years ago because I was able to—ah, do him a small favor. Now Sung takes good care of me. Eggs, Sung, scrambled, and fresh coffee and toast.”

The old man bowed deeply and went away. Still standing, he met his grandfather’s electric blue eyes.

“And why have you waited so long to come to me?” his grandfather demanded. “Sit down.”

“I really don’t know,” he answered. “I think,” he continued after a few seconds of thought, “I think I wanted to see everything—the city, the people—first for myself, so that I could always keep them, you know, inside me, as they are… to me, I mean. As one does with pictures, you know—laid away for what purpose I don’t know, but that’s my way of learning: first I see, then I wonder, then I know.”